Why has my tumour been sent to another hospital for a second opinion?

[RocketPanda]

Name changed for this as its outting.

I had a biopsy on a tumour that showed it to have cancer cells. It was then removed four weeks ago. I was due to get my results next week but have now been told its been sent to another hospital for a second opinion. The medical secretary told me this in a phone call so I obviously couldn't question her why.
Anyone had any experience of this? I'm very worried now.

Your hospital might not have facilities for more specialised tests, or it may be their procedure in your area to send particular specimens to a regional lab.

It is a pretty standard thing to happen. I work at a large a university hospital which is a regional centre for the particular cancer I work with. We review the biopsies from the local hospitals as part of our Multi disciplinary team review. Our pathology drs ( who examine the biopsies) will see these particular tumours much more frequently than a pathologist in a smaller district general hospital so can provide another level of expertise and assurance that the diagnosis is correct. They ca. Also do specialised testing if there is any question about the type of tumour

Thank you for the replies. It's my areas main oncology centre where patients are sent to from hundreds of miles away so I thought it would have the tests and expertise but obviously not, thank you for the insight @iamreally .
The waiting is awful.

It's standard procedure waiting for any results is a scary and difficult time. There is a cancer board on mumsnet -
Cancer support thread # 80 lots of wisdom and support on there. The thread no-one wants to be on but one of the nicest places on m

*mumsnet

There are regional centres, national centres, specialist centres - it could be any one of these.

Just because your local hospital looks like it should be the specialist centre doesn't mean it does every single type of cancer - that might well be done somewhere else.

I work in this area and it still confuses me! Am so sorry you are having a long wait but getting it right at the very start is vital.

Have they given you a specialist nurse to call to ask more questions?

With some tumours, the diagnosis depends on microscopic differences from normal cells. Even with a biopsy, I had an ovarian one that was 'inconclusive' till an expert pathologist had made a decision. Fortunately for me, it was classified as low malignant potential or Borderline. 'Cured by surgery'. Their findings affect the treatment plan: chemo or no chemo, before or after surgery, etc. In my case, chemo would have done more harm than good.

As Liz says, waiting for results is the worst and the cancer thread is a good place to hang out because we've all been through it.

Best of luck!

Some tumour types are very rare and a second diagnosis is needed to ensure the correct diagnosis.

Fo eg My very rare type of ovarian cancer was looked at by a few pathologists in order to decide if it was a micro invasion that would have meant a borderline diagnosis or of the cells they found were enough to warrant a stage 1A diagnosis. It was.